women in FOSS talk

Pia is giving a talk on Heroes: Women in FOSS.

Heroes feel a little bit different. Start small, then realize it's a lot different.

Think of:
10 tech women you personally know
5 non-tech women you know
3 issues around gender in ICT

Surrounded by men, and thought: These women don't know what they're missing.
Then realized, it's a widespread problem in western society.

This is NOT a GENDER issue! It's a cultural issue. Not due to body parts, but due to societal expectations.

Everytime you say "I support women in nontraditional roles" you're reinforcing that tech is a "nontraditional role" for women and that "I'm a freak".

Odd sayings:
women aren't interested in computers anyway
she must be butch to be into computers
you're not really a woman, you're one of us
you're too pretty use mutt
women like "creative" jobs
"nontraditional"roles for women

Every generation, what you have to deal with is more subtle.

Girls are high users of internet, gamers, not as polarized as boys,

Girls and boys = how they used tech differently: Boys either loved computers or hated them. Girls, just used them.

focused on social good - so FOSS is great, not on money or politics.

If you're not a "nerd" (male), then you must be this big scary monster. Had weird things assumed about her because she's into IT.

Smash the stereotypes: in positive ways.
we come in all shapes and sizes.

7.3% women in FOSS.

Isn't the point of free software to get involved? We need to get the word out.

Lots of pictures of women in FOSS.
Not that many sysadmin women


Dorothy Okello - uganda, doing great wireless stuff.
Amy Jiang = leader in China on free software.

New website:
geekfeminism.wikia.com
or geekfeminism.org

Real issues:
active discouragement: no jobs due to the bubble burst
stereotypes = need to be comfortable in ourselves as women
lack of empathy: try to not be "surprised" about women in FOSS
hard to not share the negative stories! lead by inspiring.
Jerks and lack of leadership/policies lead to mass exodus of women.
codes of conduct. not just about being good to women: be excellent to each other.

Real pathways:
show profiles of awesome women and men
go to schools and universities
working with children

be the change you seek

what do we need?
know the facts
connect with each other
assume stupidity over malice
fulfill our dreams
education about pay, negotiation and expectations
empathy: we're hackers and people too

women need to not hide
encourage others
empower women *with* technology
talk about positive stories

Philosophies of FOSS are really interesting.
FOSS is the world's most powerful platform for social change. Meritocratic, cross-everything, extremely diverse. Succeed in spite of politics, social, agendas, Digital Divide.

managing

So I've managed to put about 40some PDFs on the site we're using to collect everything. It's a pain collecting all of it - I hadn't done a very good job of organizing the stuff when I was in "research" mode. Now I know better and can do it better. I'll grab pdfs as I go and ftp them into a holding area so they're all in one place. Silly me. Ah well. Live and Learn, right?

I am *SO* tired right now. I shouldn't be. Don't know what's up with that. I've just not been feeling all that well - still feel jet-lagged. Ugh. Anyways - off to meet with the guys on my project.

Guess it's a sign from above

My university's research server just went down for the night. Can't access anymore articles. Guess that means it's time for me to go to bed. Tomorrow's the meeting to talk about the project I'm working on, in preparation for submitting the proposal at the end of the month. Tomorrow night I pick up my daughter from the airport about midnight. Friday, we drive away to OSCON, which I have to finalize plans for the trip, and get us all packed.

Somehow, I don't think the other summer interns are having quite the same experience I am... ;-)

Going to OSCON?

Here's my personal schedule. Looks like it'll be a fun conference, with many choices to make. My wonderful daughter will be joining us. I've marked some of the items as potentially of interest to her.

See you there!

Trying out lifecast on my iphone.

Geolocate this post

Posted with LifeCast

Quick review of five fave new iPhone apps

1. Jott for iPhone rocks! It allows you to take a voice note with one touch to record, one to stop, (touch *anywhere* to start and stop, you don't need to look at the phone), and does its best to transcribe (pretty good job too). And you can categorize your jotts to "work" and "home" if you want. Way more useful than the VoiceNote app I tried. Very useful for keeping notes of stuff while you're driving. Love it. EDIT: The transcriptions are really pretty good.

2. Yelp on the iPhone. Location aware, duh. Built-in obvious categories like:
*coffee and tea
*bars
*restaurants
*drugstores
*gas stations
*banks
And has an "open" filter so you can see only the ones nearby that are *open*. VERY useful app.

3. Facebook: yeah - i know Facebook has had an iPhone version for a while. I like that t allows a simple interface for facebook. The contacts list is great for finding people's info: you can dial or map them directly from here. The mini-feed is cute. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a simple, obvious way to respond to an individual directly from their "mini-feed". You have to go to Friends, find that person in your friends-list, then you can eventually compose a message. It would make more sense to be able to click on the person's name on their mini-feed, and have it bring you directly to their contact page so you can send them a message.

4. NowLocal: local headlines when you want it. Simple. But asks every frickin' time to "use local?" information. Just let me click an "always use local". There is a way to change where you want news for, when you want to do that. So - just save my preference for "use local". EDIT: pretty repetitive - not very good at updating. I suppose if I only tried it once a day, it might be better.

5. Google Mobile Apps: search is easy. Also gives a quick connection to docs, talk, iGoogle, blogger, etc. (Mostly, just brings you to the website for those, but still, it's easier to get there.) Some of the sites could be better optimized for iPhones. Blogger, for example, is just not sized correctly for the iPhone. OTOH - the gmail page is pretty nice. Easier to get to the search my mail part. Looks good. EDIT: Google Reader on iPhone is really good. I'm impressed.

Okay - that's my top 5. Gotta get some work done now. Ciao everyone. And good luck on the iPhone updates!

blogger on my iPhone

Woohoo.

to the tune of "song that never ends"

This is the update that never ends
It just goes on and on my frendz
Some people start updating never knowing how it was
but now their phones are bricking and they can't make calls because
this is the update that never ends....

Waiting [im]patiently

iPhone 2.0 is due to release ANY TIME NOW. Well, a few hours from now. There's even a beta version out there that people are downloading. It's crashing some of their systems, but working fine on others. I figure, I didn't jailbreak my phone and I can wait 8 more hours. But I've already got the mobile apps downloaded to install as soon as I've got 2.0! Woohoo!